Parish Information

Bratton Fleming is a large village, civil parish and former manor near Barnstaple, in Devon, England. The population in 2001 was 942, falling to 928 in 2011. The village is a few miles east-south-east of Exmoor. The parish is surrounded, clockwise from the north, by the parishes of Challacombe, Brayford, Stoke Rivers, Goodleigh, Shirwell, Loxhore, Arlington and Kentisbury. There is an electoral ward with the same name. The ward population at the 2011 census was 2,117.

St Peter’s Church was rebuilt on the site of a much older building, in 1861.
Rev. Gascoigne Canham (d.1667), Rector of Arlington, whose mural monument exists in Arlington Church, and a relative by marriage to the Chichester family of Arlington (a cadet branch of the Chichesters of Raleigh and later of Youlston, lords of the manor of Bratton Fleming), purchased in 1665 the advowson of Bratton Fleming, 2 1/2 miles south-east of Arlington, from Sir Francis Godolphin for £300,[4] and on 27 March 1667 he signed a deed granting the advowson in perpetuity to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, of which he was a member.[5] He also gave £10 toward the “Combination Room” of that college.[6] A mural monument exists in St Peter’s Church, Bratton Fleming, to Rev. Bartholomew Wortley, the first rector to be appointed by Gonville & Caius College. He was aged about 50 when appointed and remained in office until his death in 1749 aged 97.